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Forum:Style guide
I would like to propose a style guide for the FarmVille Wiki. This is to ensure that all edits are consistent with each other and to make using the Wiki easier. The following is what I would propose for the style guide. Feel free to discuss it at the end. Please place at the top of an article with more than 3 titles. This will align the table of contents to the right side of the article, a much neater look. Rogue 18:13, November 4, 2009 (UTC) =Style Guide= The style guide exists to ensure all edits on the FarmVille Wiki are consistent. Although one way is often as good as another, keeping the articles consistent means that they will be easier to read and to use. Article Titles Articles must have appropriate titles. The first word of each title should be capitalised but subsequest words should not be. In certain cases, where the article title is the title of something in FarmVille (such as a ribbon or market item), the title should be capitalised as it is in the game (for example, Cream of the Crop, Bell Peppers. Do not put a capital for every word in a title, except where stated above. Titles of singular topics should not be pluralised. Therefore, an article about trees should be named Tree and an article about neighbors should be named neighbor. Only where the item is pluralised in the game should the article be pluralised (for example, Strawberries. The subject of the article should be in bold only in the first occurrence''' of the word. Any subsequent occurrences are left as plain text. Sections Where appropriate, articles should be split up into sections. This makes them easier to read and edit. Each section should have a title. The title of each section should follow the same guidelines as article titles. These are as follows: *The title should not capitalize all words and should only capitalize titles of items in game *The first word should be capitalized *Only titles of plural items should be pluralized *There should not be links in the title *The title should be as short as possible Markup Use two equal signs ( ) style markup for headings. Start with , add the heading title, then end with . This section's heading was created with the markup: : Sections This subsection's heading was created with the markup: : Markup Text Text may be styled to improve the appearance of the article. Font colour In rare cases, font colour can be used in articles. Dark colours should be used to emphasize certain points. Using bold is a preferred alternative to using colours. Do not use light colours, as the do not show up well on the white background. Billeted lists Bullet points can be used to create a list. To use a bullet point, put an asterisk (*) before each point. For example: *Point 1 *Point 2 *Point 3 **Sub-point 3 Comes out as: *Point 1 *Point 2 *Point 3 **Sub-point 3 Numbered lists Numbered lists are similar to bulleted lists. They should be used to order items or in step-by-step instructions. To create a number list, put a number sign (#) before each point. For example: #Point 1 #Point 2 #Point 3 Comes out as: #Point 1 #Point 2 #Point 3 Bold and italics Put two apostrophes (italics) around text to make it italic. Italics should be used to emphasise single word or phrases. It should not be used for long bits of text. Put three apostrophes (bold) around text to make it bold. Bold should be used to emphasise longer parts of text, or where italics is not enough. The first appearance of an article's title should be in bold. Any subsequent appearances should be left as plain text. Links A link is places by putting square brackets (link) around words. This will make a link to the article, using the exact words in the link. A link can also be made with a different word as the link, bye putting the title, a | symbol then the word you want to appear in square brackets. For example, player appears as player but is linked to the farmer article. *Links should be added to any articles on a page *Links should not be made to the same article multiple time. This means that is the word farmer is mentions 5 times, only the first appearance of the word should be linked. *Plurals can be linked to by placing the s outside the box. For example, farmers will link to farmers. Writing articles The following should be kept in mind when writing articles. *'Nobody owns Articles.' This means that words such as 'I' should be left out. *Keep bias out of articles. The Wiki should remain neutral and any personal opinions must be kept out. Useful ideas are allowed in articles. *Do not add any unverifiable facts without sourcing the proof. =Discussion= Mostly looks good to me. I might have an issue with article titles being Capitalized first word then lower case rest, mainly because my experience with other wiki's are different. However, if the rest agree to this then I will just have to be careful when creating pages and categories. Rogue 18:04, November 4, 2009 (UTC) Might think about having a section about uploading images/icons. How to as well as a standard size for icons and a maximum size for images in general that we allow. Other file formats, such as icons should be png while other images should be jpg. Think of any standards we want other than what I've mentioned. Rogue 18:04, November 4, 2009 (UTC) I believe that names of crops, trees, and such are both capitalized in game and that's how they were created here. Bell Peppers, Black Berries, etc. These should remain as is. Rogue 18:15, November 4, 2009 (UTC) Where words are capitalised in the market (such as Bell Peppers), they should be capitalised. Same goes for plurals. All other things should only have the first word capitalised. I think this is better than capitalising all of the major words, as it means creating links to other articles is easy and will always be directed to the right location. If people make mistakes, we can just move the articles. For images, we need a separate policy. I was thinking of posting an image policy later this week. Theboy1001 19:11, November 4, 2009 (UTC) I think we have consensus on this, so would like to put it into effect. I will wait a little while longer to wait for any last replies, but will put this into effect later today unless I get any major opposition. Theboy1001 19:15, November 4, 2009 (UTC) :I agree regarding singular vs plural and Title Case vs Sentence case, exceptions being Named Items within the game. 17:19, November 5, 2009 (UTC) I have added the Style guide article and it is now official policy. If you wish to discuss changes to the style guide, please post on the talk page. Theboy1001 18:46, November 5, 2009 (UTC) Dates? I'm not sure how long one should wait for a response, but it's been a few since I first posted this on the Style Guide's talk page, so I'm repeating it here.. How should dates be formatted? eg. 29th December 2009 or December 29, 2009. --Ildara (talk • ) 23:17, January 27, 2010 (UTC) Personally I'm more in favour of the latter. Also because it stays the same in certain sentence constructions (eg. "started on the 29th of December 2009" instead of "started on December 29, 2009"). Gakhaas 00:04, January 28, 2010 (UTC) :Thanks for the input, but I'm still confused! ;) former = 29th December 2009 / latter = December 29, 2009. :You seem to be saying you prefer the 1st version, over the 2nd. (I actually like the second one better.) :I'm gonna check Wikipedia and see if it has anything useful to say...here we go Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) :--Ildara (talk • ) 23:10, January 29, 2010 (UTC) User pages in Categories User pages shouldn't be in categories (whether or not those categories actually exist) right? * User:Coxy234 * User:Daniel Naumoski * User:Necror --Ildara (talk • ) 05:20, January 30, 2010 (UTC) Further Formatting I think we should have a univeral layout for item pages so we get a more universal look to the wiki. This is how I think pages should look. I would love input and feel free to rearrange/add to it all you'd like. I'd like to figure something out so we can be an even better Wiki! :D Usakoi 15:57, February 20, 2010 (UTC) I like the idea very much. Theboy1001 Talk ¤ ¤ 16:44, February 20, 2010 (UTC)